=Physiological Action of Absinthe.=—The following are the conclusions which M. Magnan laid before the French Academy of Sciences, and which have given rise to some discussion in the weekly journals:—1. The epileptic or epileptiform accidents in alcoholism—or, in other words, alcoholic epilepsy—are of a radically different nature, according as the alcoholism is acute or chronic. 2. In acute alcoholism the epilepsy is under the complete influence of an external agent, of a poison (absinthe) which of itself alone causes the epileptic attack; it is epilepsy by “intoxication.” 3. The alcoholic epileptics exhibit the ordinary features of simple alcoholic cases, and also superadded phenomena, among which the epileptic attack is dominant. 4. These two groups of symptoms (the alcoholic symptoms and alcoholic convulsions), united in the same subject, have a relation to the twofold nature of the poison (absinthe), whose elements are absinthe and alcohol. 5. In chronic alcoholism the epileptic or epileptiform accidents are under the direct control of organic modifications which take place in the patient. The excess of liquids, in gradually altering the tissues, renders them capable, under the influence of various causes, of producing by themselves convulsive epileptiform phenomena, accidents analogous to those that we see take place in other patients in certain cases of lesions of the nervous centres (general paralysis, tumours of the brain, &c.) (_Comptes Rendus_, April 5.) Notes and Queries.[13]